Vanity Fair Jul-14

It’s a courtroom saga that restores your faith in the American judicial system: two of the country’s finest lawyers, epitomizing opposing philosophies—David Boies, the supremely accomplished trial lawyer and ardent Democrat, and Theodore Olson, solicitor general under President George W. Bush—forgoing partisanship in the name of civil rights. Boies and Olson joined forces in the legal battle to overturn Proposition 8, California’s 2008 ban on same-sex marriage—ultimately prevailing last year in a landmark Supreme Court case, Hollingsworth v. Perry. My esteemed colleague Financial Times editor Lionel Barber pays homage to their fight for marriage equality in this month’s V.F. Portrait, on page 66. The unlikely allies recently teamed up again to write an account of the case, Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality. They are also featured in…

What You Should Know About: JASON SEGEL A PANOPLY OF ECCENTRIC BIOGRAPHICAL DATA RE: HOLLYWOOD’S FAVORITE FUNNY GUY Jason Segel is the affable Judd-Apatow-comedy-troupe alum who has gone on to headline nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother, reboot the Muppets, and co-star with Cameron Diaz in this July’s Sex Tape comedy. Despite his Hollywood successes as a writer, producer, and actor—and his dramatic departure as David Foster Wallace in the upcoming biopic The End of the Tour—Segel seems to identify most with the awkward, adolescent iteration of himself that inspired his first literary effort, Nightmares!: a young-adult trilogy co-authored by Kirsten Miller, the first installment of which arrives in bookstores in September. Here, a compendium of the 34-year-old’s nocturnal memories, everyday preferences, and endearing peculiarities. HE BEGINS each…

Presidential candid sites—maybe we have one in mind—will take heart to learn that more than three-fourths of Americans would embrace (given sufficiently long arms) a fat president. Thai seems perfectly reasonable. So does the news thai only one in five of us claims to always work out during vacations. From those results, can we extrapolate national enthusiasm for a constantly vacationing (and presumably constantly fattening) president Nevertheless, we also say we would rather "contour" our bellies with plastic surgery than change anything else. Something we suppose, that could be achieved during a "vacation." Interestingly, while we don’t equate being attractive with being in shape, most Americans say they would exercise if it got them 10 more years of life. In theory, we feel we must point out. Finally, we collectively…

The inspiring talent of Belgian designer Axel Vervoordt is on display inside this 6,800-squarefoot penthouse atop the Greenwich Hotel—owned by Robert De Niro, Ira Drukier, and other partners—in Tribeca, New York City. Vervoordt’s signature palette of earthy tones, refined taste, and flair for assembling a mélange of antiques and art make the recently opened suite one of the most desirable properties in town. Problem is: you’ll never want to check out. (thegreenwichhotel.com)—PUNCH HUTTON…

The traumatized heroine of Tom Rachman’s ingeniously orchestrated novel The Rise & Fall of Great Powers (Dial) will travel hither and yon to solve the mystery of why a motley band of misfits abducted her from her home as a girl, only to heartlessly abandon her years later. The sinister side of privilege, female friendship, and desire feeds Katie Crouch’s mesmerizing, torn-from-the-tabloids novel, Abroad (Sarah Crichton). Brando Skyhorse survives being raised by an audaciously dysfunctional grandmother, mother, and five stepdads, in his miraculous Take This Man (Simon & Schuster). John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge target ineffective government as the catalyst for The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State (Penguin Press). A screwball author vanishes in Alessandro Baricco’s highminded literary mystery novel Mr. Gwyn (Mc Sweeney’s), translated by…

Dave Eggers sticks to dialogue in Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? (Knopf/McSweeney’s). Elizabeth Mitchell raises Liberty’s Torch (Atlantic Monthly Press). Sarah Payne Stuart grows up Wasp in Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God and Real Estate in a Small Town (Riverhead). Laurence Gonzales reconstructs the crash of Flight 232 (Norton). ABCDCS: David Collins Studio (Assouline) catalogues his influences. Lee Grant battles the blacklist in I Said Yes to Everything (Blue Rider). J. K. Rowling, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, spins The Silkworm (Little, Brown). The late C. David Heymann’s Joe and Marilyn (Atria/Emily Bestler) hits a homer. Florence Muller styles Dior: The Legendary Images (Rizzoli). Megan Abbott spreads The Fever (Little, Brown). Jojo Moyes entertains in One Plus One (Pamela Dorman).…